CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

"Are you guys hungry? Like I have to ask." The woman in the kitchen chuckles as the teenagers make their way inside the house. "Who's this?" She asks when she sees the older of the two girls; the youngest stopped outside to try calling Tyler.

"Bella Swan." Jared tells her. "Who else?"

"Oh, so, you're the vampire girl." She smirks.

"So, you're...the wolf girl." Bella says as she steps inside.

"Guess so." She nods. "Well, I'm engaged to one." She says as Jay walks in beside Bella, taking a deep breath to control her frustration at Tyler not answering his phone. "And who's this?"

"Oh, uh... That's Jay." Embry tells her, and Jared laughs.

"Oh." Emily smiles, and the girl in question pauses a moment when she sees the scars that drag down the right side of her face. "You're the girl that Paul and Embry used to fight about."

Jay glances at Embry and then shoots Bella a dirty look when she snickers at the younger girl's discomfort in the situation. She's not used to seeing Jay look so awkward.

"Save some for your brothers." The Quileute girl quickly grabs Jared's hand when he reaches for the tray of muffins that she just set on the table in front of him and Embry. "And ladies first. Muffin?" She offers to the teenage girls.

"Sure." Bella nods and then walks forward to grab one.

"Leave it to Jacob to find a way around Sam's gag order." She says as the younger two girls move to stand near the wall across from where the boys are sitting.

"Um, he didn't...say anything to us." Bella tells her.

"That's a wolf thing." Embry says, and the girls look at him. "Alpha's orders get obeyed whether we want 'em to or not. Oh, and check it out — we can hear each other's thoughts."

"Would you shut up?" Jared looks at him, obviously irritated with the younger boy. "These are trade secrets. Damn it! This chick runs with vampires." He motions to Bella.

"You can't really run with vampires." Bella argues, and Emily chuckles as she looks down at the boys. "'Cause they're fast."

"Yeah? Well, we're faster." He tells her. "Freaked out yet?"

She shakes her head. "You're not the first monsters I've met."

"Jake's right." Sam says as he walks into the house. "You're good with weird." He then walks over to his fiancée and wraps his arms around her before he starts kissing the side of her face.

"Weird, yes." Jay nods. "Monsters, I don't think so." She says, and before any of the boys can ask what she means, Paul walks into the house.

The shirtless Quileute boy looks at Bella as he sits in front of the two girls. "Sorry." He says, a smirk on his tan face. He glances at Jay and then turns to grab a muffin from the tray in the center of the table.

"So, Jay?" Emily gets her attention, and she looks back at the older girl. "What about you?"

"What about me, what?" The little brunette asks as Bella starts toward Jake.

"You're not freaked out by any of this?" She asks, and Jay shakes her head. "Are they not the first...not quite monsters you've met? Why did you specify not monsters?"

"Oh, 'cause she's got a type." Bella says, and Jay leans past Paul to pick up a muffin from the table before chucking it at her. "Ow!" She's laughing as she looks back at her friend.

"Oh, toughen up, buttercup." Jay says.

"What do you mean type?" Emily asks as Paul shifts uncomfortably.

"Half wolf boys." Bella chuckles.

"Tyler is not half wolf, he's a werewolf. And he was human when we were growing up."

"Half-werewolf." She's still trying to refrain from laughing.

"Keep it up, your cause of death is gonna change." Jay mutters as she leans against the wall behind her, still standing behind Paul.

"You mean, I'm not gonna get mauled by a bear in the woods?" Bella asks.

"Hm-m." She shakes her head. "Slipped on a banana peel. I'm sorry, Charlie, she's a klutz. I told her to watch where she walks." She says, and the older girl starts laughing.

"As long as I still get the killer eulogy." She says, Jay laughs as she looks at her.

"You two spend too much time together." Jake shakes his head at them.

"Can we go back to the part where werewolves are real?" Jared asks, and Jay looks at him.

"Uh... Okay, well, the gene runs through his family's bloodline, and he was...forced into triggering the curse." She tells him.

"We turn when vampires are near. Why does he turn?" Embry asks, and she takes a deep breath.

"It's not... He didn't mean to, it was an accident. He was defending himself."

"What?" His eyebrows furrow as he looks at her, not understanding why she's defending Tyler.

"You turn because vampires are here?" She asks, and he nods.

"We protect the tribe from threats." Sam says, and she looks at him. "It's why the gene is activated. We kill vampires that trespass on our land."

"Tyler's gene isn't...activated. It's triggered. And there's a reason that it's called a curse." Jay says. "We were at a party, and this girl attacked him — she went after him with scissors, stabbed him in the chest. He pushed her back, and she fell, hit her head. The blow killed her, and triggered his curse. When he turns, it's not fast like that was." She motions between Paul and Jake. "It's hours of...bones snapping and reforming, agonizing pain." She looks down as she remembers his screams.

"You were with him?" Bella asks, eyebrows furrowed when she sees the look on her friend's face, and she nods.

"After he triggered it, we started doing all kinds of research, and...we found footage of his uncle's transformation. Mason had chronicled the entire thing." She tells them. "After we watched the hours of video... Tyler was terrified and he didn't want to be alone... We used a cellar and chained him up so that he couldn't get out, and he reinforced a gate to keep me separate from him while he was turned. 'Cause when he turns, he's an animal. There's no human thought. He isn't...him."

"You said that you spent too much of your life talking to wolves." Paul says, his head turned toward her, but he won't meet her gaze.

She nods. "Yeah, uh... The first full moon, he tried to kill me after he turned. But after that, the wolf would just...pace the cellar. He couldn't get out, and he knew that I was there. He always seemed calm when I would talk to him, and we'd be down there for hours." She tells him. "But Tyler never remembered anything from when he was turned, he wasn't like you."

"Bella said that he's half werewolf." Jake says, and she looks at him.

"Tyler's a hybrid." Jay says. "He was born with the werewolf gene, and then triggered it. A few months after that...he was turned into a vampire." She tells them, and the boys all sit up straighter as they turn to look at her. "But he isn't like the one from the clearing. I didn't know that there were two kinds before yesterday."

"He's a vampire?" Paul questions, his brown eyes staring straight into hers.

"Yeah. But he doesn't hurt people." She says, and he scoffs as he stands up.

"Yeah, 'cause leeches are such upstanding members of society."

"He doesn't hurt anyone, none of my friends do." She insists, and he turns back to face her.

"How many vampires are you friends with?" He questions.

"How about you drop the attitude, you dick? None of them asked for it any more than you did."

"You're comparing us now?" He takes a step toward her, and she shakes her head.

"No, 'cause there's no comparison." Jay says. "What happened to you, huh? You got a fever and a little pissed off? They were all murdered!"

"That's enough." Sam gets between them and he pushes Paul back a step.

"Don't judge what any of us have been through when you don't know shit. Tyler was just being a normal freaking teenager when he had vampire blood forced down his throat and then his neck snapped. Stefan and Damon were manipulated and toyed with for weeks before their father shot them both in their chests. Caroline was smothered in her hospital bed. Elena was run off the road and then drowned in the same lake that her parents died in! And my mom..." She chokes back a sob and then turns around and walks out of the house, shoving past Bella and Jake.

"I thought her mom died in some kind of accident." Jared says as he looks at Paul.

"Her sister's a vampire?" Embry asks.

Emily walks out back with a glass of water in her hand and she makes her way down the steps to where the teenager's standing. "Are you alright?" The older girl asks, and Jay looks at her as she holds the glass out toward her.

"Yeah." She nods and then takes a drink of the water, using the pause to help collect herself. "I don't talk about my mom often...or think about what happened to her. I've lost a lot of family, but losing her definitely hit me the hardest."

"Paul didn't mean to offend you." Emily tells her. "It's in our tribal stories — the horrific things that vampires have done, and to our people as well."

"I really don't even blame him." Jay admits, shaking her head. "Besides a select few, I hate vampires too. It's just...without the ones who are my friends, I don't have much in the way of... Well, anything, really."

They hear a car pulling up, and both girls turn to see who it is. Jay's eyebrows furrow when she sees the car that Tyler's been using since he got to town. He gets out, followed by two others.

"Uh-oh." The little brunette sighs. "How bad do things have to get for the Brothers Salvatore both to show up around here?" She asks, and Stefan glances at his brother as they walk nearer to her and Emily.

"Can we talk alone, kid?" Damon asks, but then he sees the five Quileute boys and Bella walking out of the house. "Or not... Where are their shirts?"

"Yeah, um..." Jay looks at the others, her eyes lingering on Paul a bit longer than the rest, before she looks back at the vampires. "I'm sick of all the secrets, and they already know that I'm friends with vampires, so... What's going  on?"

He clears his throat as he glances around at the others. "Lockwood told you that we went to that island to get the cure for vampirism?" He asks, and she nods.

"Yeah, a bunch of you went to an island off the coast of Nova Scotia because there was supposed to be a cure. You all wanted to get it for Elena." She says. "I assume that didn't work out, like most of our plans don't."

"Mhm." Damon nods.

"So, how bad is it this time?"

"There was only one dose of the cure." He tells her. "And we got double-crossed."

"By the witch-doctor?" She asks. "The guy that Tyler said was manipulating Bonnie into raising some two-thousand-year-old immortal? The one that Kol was convinced would bring hell on earth? Don't tell me that you dumbasses set him free."

"Not us." Stefan says, and she looks at him.

"Do your friends always beat around the bush?" Bella asks as she walks down the patio steps.

"When Damon's being a dick, or Stefan's afraid...afraid of how we'll take the news." Jay looks between the three of them again. "What the hell happened on that island?"

"We had Rebekah with us, and she's apparently wanted to be human again for the last thousand years." Damon tells her. "Klaus was the one who found out that there was only one dose, and he told her, so she snapped Stefan's neck to get ahead of him and Elena. Then she left me for dead with a Hunter, and..."

"Spit it out, Damon." She says as she takes a step forward.

"She fed Jeremy's blood to Silas...and Silas killed him." He says, and she nods slowly.

"Okay, but... He had his ring, right?" She asks. "I mean, I know that it drove Ric crazy, but Jeremy hasn't died with it on as many times as he had, right?"

"Jeremy was a Hunter, Jay — one of the Brotherhood of the Five. He had supernatural strength, and a supernatural destiny to find and kill Silas. Jeremy wasn't entirely human anymore."

"Elena told me about that. She said that you made a deal with Klaus." Jay looks at Stefan. "And now he's... You did it to him!" She chucks the glass, and Stefan catches it easily. Some of the water ends up on the ground, and some wets his arm.

"I'm sorry, Jay." Stefan says. "If I had known—"

"You should've." She sobs. "Nobody supernatural is ever safe there... Especially when Klaus gets involved. What the hell were you thinking?!" She runs her hands through her hair, pushing it away from her face, and then her gaze lands on Tyler. "How long have you known?"

"It's the reason I came here, Jay." The hybrid tells her.

"You knew this whole time that my brother was dead?" She questions. "And you took me to dinner, let me go hiking, and then shopping for a new phone. What the hell, Tyler?!"

"I had already left Mystic Falls to run from Klaus. Damon called and told me that I needed to come here. We had to make sure that you were protected."

"Protected?" She echoes. "From what?"

"Jay..." Damon walks over to her. "When Elena realized that Jeremy wasn't gonna wake up...she flipped her switch, and then she burned your house to the ground with Jeremy's body inside. It's the cover story for his death... And then she left Mystic Falls, and we have no idea where she is."

"She burned... Everything's gone?" Jay chokes back a sob as she puts her hand over her mouth and turns her back to him.

"Stefan got some of the stuff from your room and Jeremy's, and I got some from Ric and Jenna's room so that you'd still have some things." He tells her. "Some of it, we brought with us here for you to keep with you. Some, we put into a room at the Boarding House. That room will be yours whenever you come to visit."

"So, everyone's dead." The little brunette says as she turns again to look back at Damon as she cries. "Miranda, Grayson, John, Marie...Mom—" She sobs. "Ric, and Jeremy...and Elena's gone. I have no family left, no home with the memories of everyone that I grew up with." She exhales a shaky breath. "My entire... It's all just gone." She stumbles back, her legs no longer feeling like they can support her, and her heel hits the bottom step of the patio.

Jay collapses onto the step and buries her face in the palms of her hands as her body becomes wracked with sobs. Damon kneels down in front of her and his fingers curl around her wrists so that he can get her to look at him. Her brown eyes are glassy and red-rimmed as he reaches up to wipe tears from her cheek.

"Why does everyone always leave me?" Jay hiccups, and he sighs as he rests his hand on the side of her face.

"Listen to me, rugrat." He speaks softly as he looks her in the eyes. "Stefan and I are going to find your sister, and we'll bring her back."

"What if you can't?" She asks. "I mean, how many decades have you and Stefan spent with your humanity off? What if she doesn't come back in my lifetime?"

His eyebrows furrow as he realizes the very real possibility of what she's asking. "Then you'll have me, kid." He tells her. "You need me, you call, and I'll be here. I will never leave you. And never for a vampire... Well, that's forever." Damon promises as he wipes his thumb across her tear-stained face again.